Prototype telescope (PS1)
Construction of PS1, the single-mirror prototype for Pan-STARRS on Haleakala, is now complete; thee first Gigapixel Camera was installed in August 2007,
PS1 started regular observing in March 2009, providing scientific date to the PS1 Scientific Consortium.
During commissioning and early scientific observing the following landmarks were noted:
- An observing rate of several hundred fields per night in five passbands was achieved.
- The IPP (Image Processing Pipeline proved capable of processing a whole night’s data (600 images) in 15 hours
- The MOPS (moving object pipeline) works well: 4000 known asteroids have been detected, plus 7 new ones which have been reported to the minor planet center.
- Nine new supernovae have been discovered.
During the first few months regular observing, concerns arose about image jitter and local atmospheric seeing effects. Although the telescope is sometimes capable of producing excellent images over the entire field with sub-arcsecond resolution, problems with image quality were detected in an unacceptably large fraction of the images PS1 was producing. It was therefore decided to suspend regular observing in September 2009 in order to address these problems.
The telescope will be back on the air by Thanksgiving 2009: testing of the modified mirror support will occur in December/January. Several thermal imaging experiments will be also performed around the telescope. It is hoped to resume full science operation shortly after this.
Ps4 telescope
The favored location for PS4 is the site of the University of Hawaii 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea. If all the necessary permissions can be obtained, we would remove the current 2.2-meter telescope and its building, and construct PS4 inside a smaller building that has a reduced visibility and a design that blends into the background compared to the current facility. An Environmental Impact Statement is currently being prepared by the architectural company Group70.
While the project had planned to release a Draft Environmental Impact Statement and reinitiate the NHPA Section 106 process in early 2010, IfA and Project leadership have decided to delay that action for 12-18 months so we can focus our attention on utilizing our FY2010 funding to bring PS1 to full Survey Status and complete installation of PS2 in the existing LURE Observatory on Haleakala.
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